


A Slow Sort of Doomsday

by xbedhead



Category: X-Men (Comicverse), X-Men (Movieverse), X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Angst, Bigotry, Dubious Consent, F/M, Fury, Holocaust, Rage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-28
Updated: 2015-12-28
Packaged: 2018-05-09 23:43:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5560465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xbedhead/pseuds/xbedhead
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>His misery didn't end with Schmidt. A look at the decade after the camps were liberated as Erik desperately tries to piece together something resembling a life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Slow Sort of Doomsday

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this shortly after seeing _XMFC_ for the first time. I fell in love with the character of Magneto and the depth that they brought to his backstory. This is a summary of the eight or so years after the camps were liberated and how Erik did his best to put a life together, but the fates were against him. It's inspired by comic!canon, but I used elements of the movies as well. It's not beta'd and is several years old at this point, but I'd love to hear any feedback.

Soap lathered between his fingers, Erik rinsed his hands in the basin of warm water on the shelf. Magda's groans were getting louder. Their room was stifling and near dark, lit only by the fire's light and a candle melted to the nightstand.

She took his hand in her sweaty grip, squeezing for all she was worth. It wasn't much – several months out of the camp had done precious little to add any weight to her petite frame. Black hair plastered to her forehead, she pushed herself up on her elbows and bore down.

“Just push,” he said quietly, unnerved by the noises she was making. He had no idea what to do, how to help her.

Her last groan tapered off into a shrill sigh and she lay back on the pillows, breathing hard. “I can't do this.”

“You _can_ ,” he encouraged, shifting onto the edge of their twin-sized bed. He kissed her knuckles and pushed the hair back from her face. “I know you can.”

Shaking her head, Magda's eyes fluttered closed, a grimace briefly coloring her features. “It's too much. I don't...I don't want this”

Erik swallowed, ignoring her last statement. “You're almost there.”

That was a lie.

It was another eight hours before Magda gave her final push, nearly fainting from exhaustion and blood loss as the head and shoulders slipped from her body. Erik caught the slimy, wriggling mass in both of his hands, shocked at how warm the baby was.

It was a boy.

His mother had been a midwife and more than once he'd gone with her, walked her to a neighbor's house in the middle of the night, nursing a hot chocolate in the living room while an anxious father paced the floor. But peeking through the cracks in the door and actually participating were two very different matters. 

His hands trembled as he placed the clothespins on the umbilical cord then tied it off. Magda was sitting up by then, rubbing the baby's face with an old shirt, trying to coax a cry from him. There was nothing, no response from the infant for several long moments. 

Erik stopped what he was doing to watch, his heart pounding loudly in the sudden silence of the room. She stuck her finger in the baby's mouth, sweeping out a thick clot of mucous and slinging it onto the floor. 

The wailing was instant. 

Erik breathed heavily, his shoulders dropping with relief. He hadn't realized how much he'd wanted this until just that moment, when there was a chance it would be taken away.

\---

He looked at the bundle sleeping in the crook of Magda's arm and came close to smiling. The baby's – Jakob's – face was pink, streaked a rusty red in places where they hadn't quite cleaned the blood off. 

Erik licked his thumb and swiped it gently across his fat cheeks, then over his brow and up near his hairline. In doing so, the cloth they'd wrapped him in shifted slightly...revealing a mass of curly blond hair.

Erik felt his skin go cold from the feet up and it was like every sound in the room had been sucked into a vacuum.

_“Don't say anything.”_

_“Magda, I thought – ”_

_“He gives me bread.”_

_“_ I'll _get you bread.”_

_“You can't.”_

_“I'll_ find _a way.”_

He'd caught her in the washroom with the _Gefreiter_ , locked panicked eyes with her over the other man's shoulder. Leaving as silently as he'd entered, he waited in the shadows for the soldier to pass. Magda was still in the dank lavatory, tears in her eyes as she washed herself off. 

She couldn't even look at him as she said, “Don't say anything.” 

Arm stamped and collared like a dog, Erik had been turned out into the camps, _Herr Doktor_ hoping a slap in the face by reality would coax about a level of sorely-lacking cooperation. Deprivation hadn't worked – Erik had almost starved himself to death. And then, of course, the experiments, the systematic torture and beatings were getting tiresome, Schmidt had commented with an air of boredom. 

On _Sonderkommando_ duty, Erik had tied a kerchief over his mouth and nose, careful to inhale slowly, even through the barrier. Human ash hung thick in the musty air and his stomach constantly ached from hunger. It was either too hot or too cold, _always_ gray, but he would take this. He would take it over working with Schmidt. 

_Schmidt_...who'd managed to twist something deep inside him beyond repair.

Magda, a thin waif of a girl, was in charge of bringing Erik and his fellow 'special unit' members water. He'd fallen for her instantly, her dark eyes awakening an unknown longing within him with a gentle yawn. The other men stayed away from her. She was Roma, a gypsy. 

But then Erik knew something about being an exile amongst outcasts.

When the Soviets arrived, guns firing and bombs dropping, Erik had taken bolt cutters to the collar and made for a hole in the fence, not giving a second thought to dragging Magda behind him. They hid in the woods for three days, living on melted snow and adrenaline, then made their way south on stolen shoes. 

\---

_It doesn't matter._

That's what he told himself every day, with every changed diaper, every sleepless night, every time he brought Jakob to Magda to be fed.

_It doesn't matter._

He was through blaming people, through being angry, through with being used as a tool. This child was proof of that. He was the evidence of the family Erik had never known he wanted, the one he could hold together – the one he could _protect_. He loved him, watched him grow into that love, toddling his way across the floor of their two-room apartment beside an abandoned doctor's office. 

Magda was reluctant at first, giving him only the necessary attention. Erik knew she saw that _Gefreiter_ every time she looked at the little boy, he could feel her stomach turn when Jakob latched onto her breast. 

She'd done what she had to in order to survive. They all had. He wouldn't blame her for that. _Couldn't_.

\---

Like his father and grandfather before him, Erik knew the art of tailoring. He knew it well and appreciated how very much clothes made the man. It kept them afloat those first few years, his foot pumping the pedal while Jakob played nearby, mesmerized by the patter and creak of the machine. 

Magda made local medicines and wary women brought sick infants to their doorstep. For the sake of a child, anyone was willing to overlook their prejudices.

On Jakob's third birthday, they all went to the park. Magda had packed a picnic lunch with cold chicken and apples. Erik brought Jakob down to the creek, dangled the laughing boy over the water and held his hand as he dragged one foot across the cool surface. It was calm, almost peaceful. They had a Polaroid taken under a towering cedar, Erik almost smiled with a squinting Jakob in one arm, Magda tucked quietly beneath the other. A family.

A week later he had a fever. Magda pounded leaves into pastes, wiped them in thick swatches on his sinking chest. She mixed roots and flowers and berries in with hot water. Erik pinched Jakob's nose and the baby gagged as she poured the teas into his mouth. None of it seemed to be working. 

His cough kept them both awake at night, Jakob's oven-hot body between them on the bed. Sometimes Erik would lift his eyes from Jakob's face and catch Magda's empty stare. They said nothing to one another. There was nothing to say.

\---

Two weeks after they buried him, Magda had yet to come out of the house. Erik went for long walks in the crisp weather, indulged in a few cigarettes and tried to keep his mind empty, off of what he'd lost, _again_.

At night, Magda paced the apartment, slippered feet scooting along the hardwood. Erik slept in fits and starts, exhaustion creeping in around the edges, lugging up buried memories he'd pushed to the bottom of his inward ocean. 

His own screams, drills and gunshots provided the soundtrack as Schmidt's face loomed before him, backed by flames and the cloying scent of burning bodies.

He'd wake up gagging, needing to retch, Magda sitting in the armchair next to the bed.

“Who's 'Herr Doktor'?” she asked him once.

Erik had said nothing, only swallowed as the bile burned its way up his throat. 

\---

They did an awkward dance around one another, speaking only when necessary, eggshells cutting into the soles of their feet.

One night in bed, he realized it had been four months since they'd had sex and when he asked her if she wanted to she'd shrugged. Thirty minutes later, they were both naked on the mattress, Erik panting, Magda taking a drag from one of his cigarettes. He reached for her, wanting to pull her to him, but she rolled away. 

Erik watched the smoke rise from over her shoulder for a moment, hating his helplessness and wishing there was something he could do.

\---

The spring of 1952 offered hope and sunshine. Magda was five months pregnant and he'd been hired at a local haberdashery. The pay was modest, but so was their lives.

Coming home at dusk, Erik had the window rolled down, a light breeze entering the black sedan they'd purchased used the week before. His hand had trembled as he signed his name on the title. A car was something solid, it meant that they'd made it – there was no looking back.

As he slammed the door and took out the jack and wrench, he cursed himself for not checking the tires more closely.

“Erik?”

“Stay inside, it looks like rain. This won't take but a minute.”

He crouched beside the car, hands working furiously as he twisted the lug nuts from the rim. 

It wasn't until he heard the lumbering diesel engine that he realized how precarious their position was. They'd gotten the flat on the bend of a downhill curve. He froze in the headlights of a dump truck, mouth gaping as his eyes locked on the grill. 

When he woke up, he was on his back, staring up at the skeletal fingers of a dead branch on an oak tree. He coughed once, twice, filling his lungs to capacity and noting the dagger sharp pain in his ribs. He began to register a hissing noise coming from above and he clamored out of the ditch he'd apparently landed in.

There was smoke and steam and the wheels were still spinning on the dump truck. The car was nowhere to be seen.

Staggering into the road, Erik moved toward the wreckage, taking in the faint groans of the two men in the other vehicle. He checked inside briefly – they were both alive, bleeding from head wounds, but otherwise able to free themselves.

He called out in the darkness, “Magda!” and lurched forward. There was a crack of thunder in the near distance and heavy clouds shifted, revealing a moon that had risen while he'd been unconscious.

 _There_.

Beneath the passenger side of the dump truck, buried in the cavernous ditch, he saw the rear fender. Ignoring the quick stab in his ankle, he sprinted for the car, skidding to a halt when he saw the mangled mess it had been turned into.

“ _Magda!_ ” he shouted once more, dropping to his knees, fingers scrabbling in the loosened dirt around the car frame.

After only a few seconds, he knew that endeavor would be fruitless and he made his way over the precarious pile of twisted steel to the other side. She was just coming around, rousing at his shouts. He reached through the cracked windshield and touched his hand to her face. 

“Magda?”

She recoiled, shocked at the contact, and blinked several times. “What...”

“It's okay. Everything's all right. I'm going to get you out.”

He was already taking his jacket off, rolling his shirt sleeves up as he shifted on his knees. Wrapping his hands in the thick tweed, he pulled at the glass, making the hole larger. He brushed the pieces away, clearing a path for her to come out, and leaned into the car. “Come on – take my arms,” he encouraged.

She reached for him, face screwing with pain as he pulled back, trying to slide her out. Her shout stopped him abruptly, settling a fresh wave of panic cresting through his nerves.

“What is it?”

“I'm _stuck_ ,” she panted, voice trembling. “It hurts – Erik...”

“It's okay,” he said quickly, shifting so he could see inside the car better. It didn't matter – nothing he did could make up for the near blackness he was trying to operate in.

“I'll be right back.” He brushed her cheek quickly and slipped back, pushing himself to his feet.

The first patter of rain smacked him on his forehead. The droplets were thick with promise of a storm and he scrambled his way up the steep incline to the road. The dump truck was nearly upside down, the two men inside heaped like empty puppets on the roof of the cab.

“Hey!” he shouted, clamoring for the door and trying to rouse either of them. His hands slipped on the rain-slicked handle and he banged on the windscreen, miraculously still intact. “Hey, I need-I need your help,” he panted. “My wife is stuck - _please_ , wake up!”

One of the men started to wake, shifting to his side with a groan. 

He gripped the bar that once held the side view mirror in place and peered inside the cab through the open driver's window. “Please – can you hear me? I need your help.”

The cab creaked with the movement. Whatever was in the truck – as if it needed anymore weight – was heavy, pushing down on the car and lodging it deeper into the soft earth. 

He heard Magda's screams and rushed back into the ditch, afraid of what he might find.

“It hurts – God, it hurts. Erik, please.”

“I'm trying – I'm-I'm coming. I'll – ”

He stood, hands bunched into fists and he looked at the truck and all of its cargo pressing their car deeper into the ditch. He took a step back, head swiveling from one end of the road to the other. It had to have been at least an hour since he had awoken and he'd yet to see a car pass by. That was why he'd liked that particular drive so much – it was secluded.

He felt a pang of fear – no, something _deeper_ than that – coil its way up his gut and into his throat, nearly strangling him. He couldn't swallow around the heartbeat in his throat. He couldn't –

“ _Erik_!”

His fingers trembled as he took in the shining pile of scraps before him. 

_Metal. **No**_. 

It was like trying to open a door with rusted hinges, freeing his mutation. He'd pushed it down so far within him that if he stayed busy enough, he could forget about it for days on end. Fingers outstretched, chest heaving, the dump truck slowly rolled, creaking its protests as its four wheels landed with a great thud in the middle of the narrow road. He blew out a harsh breath and blinked the water and blood from his eyes. He had to concentrate to keep it upright, to prevent it from rolling into the opposite gutter. He heard the pained shouts from the two men inside the cab, but couldn't worry about what they were suffering.

The sedan he lifted carefully, arms taut, cold rain plastering his hair to his forehead. He fought to keep his mind in the present, to keep it out of _there_ , when he'd had no control, when Schmidt had begun to mold him like some sort of play thing. The car shifted from the expanding stream in the ditch and Erik guided it safely up until his focus slipped and it began to fall.

In his panic, he nearly dropped it, sliding bodily into the ditch as a bout of vertigo attacked his balance. Growling in pain and near-exhaustion, he pushed himself up from his knees and crawled to the passenger door, ripping the offending panel away with a flick of his wrist.

Dazed, Magda turned to him, arms reaching out. He pulled her out, panting with exertion, veins still coursing with adrenaline, with the fear of what could've happened if he'd messed up, if he'd made the wrong move.

The gutter was quickly filling with water and he scooted upward, gripping Magda beneath her arms, heedless of the throbbing in his foot and in his ribs. The mud made it difficult, but he eventually cleared them both of the ditch. He knew that they needed to move, that they needed to get out of the road and find some shelter from the rain, but he was ready to faint.

Magda looked up at him, face wet and streaked with mud. “How did you...” Her voice trailed off as her head lolled in his lap.

“Shh...just...shh, I've got you.” He settled his hand over her round belly and cradled her tighter to his chest, praying that she'd forget. That she'd forget and a car would come by soon. 

\---

“You never answered my question.”

It was three days after the wreck. Magda had barely been able to get out of bed and he'd shuffled around the house with a makeshift cane, tending to both of their needs while trying to catch up on the suits he'd been assigned to make.

“What do you mean?” he asked lightly, even as a cold weight settled in his stomach.

“How did you get me out of the car?”

He looked over his shoulder, trying to effect a nonchalance he'd never felt, not once in his life. “I suppose I'm stronger than I look. Adrenaline and – ”

“You moved that truck,” she interrupted slowly, like she was trying to piece her memories together. “I was pinned and you moved that truck, you pulled the door away and then you – ”

“Magda, please, it doesn't matter. It doesn't – ”

“ _It matters to me!_ ” she shouted, her voice shrieking as her eyes went wild.

Erik stood stock still by the sink, soapy saucer in hand. He couldn't say a thing, couldn't trigger the nerves necessary for speech. Soap dripped in the warm water.

“Erik,” she started slowly, an edge to her voice, “what happened.”

“I-I don't know,” he stuttered as he dropped the plate. His entire body felt cold, chest tight like he was caught somewhere he shouldn't have been, the way he'd felt when the Gestapo had lifted the panel on the floorboard. “I-I was afraid. Magda, my love, y-you were hurt, _please_.”

He had no idea what he was pleading for, but he could still see the fear written plainly on her face.

She shook her head, eyes sliding away from his as she shifted on the bed, putting space between the two of them. “What's...you...”

“I'm a mutant,” he said finally, defeat in his voice. He couldn't bare to lift his eyes, knowing he'd see rejection in hers.

“A...a mutant?” She said the word slowly, like she couldn't wrap her tongue around it.

Erik nodded reluctantly, too afraid to say anything.

“A mutant,” she repeated, the question gone from her voice. “Oh my...oh my God. You're...you're one of them. That's why – that's why they had you.”

“One of what?” He limped to her side, hands clutching at her shoulders as she tried to twist away from him. “Magda, one of – ”

He was cut off by the clap of gunfire and both their heads snapped toward the window.

“What's that noise?”

Magda shook her head, looking him in the eye for the first time in two days.

He dropped his hands and made his way to the front window, pulled back the thin curtains so he could look into the darkness. Only, it wasn't darkness that he saw. The black night was dotted with fire, flames bobbing to the beat of the march. Magda hobbled up beside him, taking a peek out the window as well.

“Oh my God,” she whispered, backing away. 

Erik dropped the curtain and ran for his shoes, while Magda heaved a suitcase up from beneath the bed.

“ _Leave it!_ ” he ordered, pulling her with him once more as he made for the door.

It was like Birkenau all over again – too much noise and confusion to think of anything but escape. By the time they made it down the front steps, the mob was on the dirt path leading to their apartment. He turned to his left, keeping her tucked to his side, but stopped in his tracks as another group of people descended on their walkway.

“What do you want?” he barked, hoping the fear in his voice was overridden by anger.

“You know what we want,” someone shouted back, waving their torch toward him.

They moved back toward the house, but their way was blocked by the a pack of barely restrained and snarling hunting dogs. Magda clutched at his arm and somehow, through all of the noise, he could hear her. “Erik, please – don't let them...” 

She was holding onto him and in that moment, for at least _that second_ , he felt like, if they could make it out, they might be all right. She might be able to see past his flaws, his...differences and everything could be like it was before.

He pulls her tighter against him and assures her, “I won't. I won't – _stay with me_.”

He could barely hear his own voice above the raucous shouting. The crowd moved as one, lunging forward and sucking him into their undertow. He felt her fingertips scrabbling for his, but their sweat-slicked palms slipped over one another's. Torch flames licked his cheek, singeing his eyebrows, while nail-sharp fingers dug at his arms, pulled at his hair and suddenly he was thrust above, black sky before his eyes. He was on their shoulders, being carried...somewhere.

“Magda?! _Magda!_ ” he cried, but he could no longer pinpoint her shouts.

He took the moment to catch his breath and willed every ounce of energy forth as he twisted and bucked against their grip. In his rabid fits and kicks, they dropped him, twice, but both times he was back in their grasp, hoisted above as they moved toward the town center. 

He caught glimpses of the pyre as he bounced along and he felt the fear well up within him.

 _They were going to burn him._ They were going to tie him to that post and burn him for all the town to see. 

Efforts renewed, he twisted and snarled and became a wild thing in their grasp. But they wouldn't let him go, they wouldn't drop their prey.

Suddenly, amidst all the chaos his mind quieted and he stilled. What he needed to do became very clear to him. The fear fell away and all there was...was anger.

He roared, head thrown back, chest heaving, as he ripped his arms from their grasp and simply opened his body to the groan of every molecule and atom that had long been ignored. 

Schmidt was dancing behind his eyes as lampposts wrenched free, taking out wide swatches of people in their way. He felt the drills against his teeth as the bronze statue suddenly became an angel of death, wreaking blows to the skulls of anyone within the width of its wings. He saw his mother, bald and wasting away while lovely ladies screeched as their hat pins pressed deep into their craniums. Men gasping last breaths as their cuff links tore through their trachea and his father's hands were heavy on his shoulders, holding him steady against the sway of the train. His hands were shaking as he sewed on the star and children screamed as their jacket buttons became bullets, pelting out their eyes. The dogs - _oh, those fucking dogs_ \- were finally, _finally_ quieted as their collars tightened around their neck.

He stood in the midst of the commotion, teeth bared, feral in his rage. Bits and pieces of the town flew about him in a tornado of metal, pulling people up into its whirlwind. It became a blur and their screams quieted with their deaths, but it didn't matter. His vision was overrun by blackness and he heard nothing but the blood rushing behind his ears and the remnants of stomping boots.

\---

The house looks deserted in the pre-dawn light.

The door is half-open, hanging really, from the top hinge. He pushes it aside, fingernails rusty with blood. He'd rummaged through the bodies looking for Magda, turning each woman over with a skip of his heart that nearly made him sick. 

Not from what he'd done. No. He made himself see past the hollowed-out cases of humans lying before him. 

But the thought that he could've hurt her...

He inhales deeply and the scent of copper and last night's dinner is thick in the air. His stomach growls, but he doesn't notice. She's on the floor in the corner near the table, knees bent, a pool of blood congealed between her bare heels. His heart stutters and his hand is glued to the door frame. 

“...Magda? Oh, Magda...”

He starts for her, but she shakes her head dully, holding a blood-covered hand out. “No,” she says weakly, head still shaking. She won't look at him. “I couldn't...”

What she's done settles over him like a wet blanket. He can barely suck in a breath and his jaws are clenched tight when he says, “Ma – _no_. **No**...how...”

“I can't have this... _thing_ inside me.”

Her reply is simple and damning and it's the last thing he hears before turning around and walking back out the front door. It's like he's floating and it doesn't occur to him that he should kill her, too.

The morning sun is out, but the air is cool, remnants of the night's breeze still lingering. He's walking the dirt path toward town, the same path they'd taken him down the night before. The same path he'd fallen to, been kicked and pushed into. The same path he'd stood on while the world spun 'round him.

He passes bodies along the way, some face down, some twisted up with eyes open, their faces stiffened into their last howls before death. Mothers on top of children, fathers on top of mothers. It doesn't matter. They're all dead. 

He steps over a growing puddle from the broken water pump and enters the haberdashery. He strips naked near the counter and pulls one of his suits from the mannequin in the front window. Undershirts and socks and boxers are displayed on shelves near the washroom and he grabs several in his size on his way in. He throws the clothes onto the bench mechanically and turns the water spigot without touching it, splashing his face with the icy stream. He rinses his mouth out, spits the pink water into the sink and watches it swirl into the drain.

He dries his hands on a nearby towel, barely catching his haggard reflection in the mirror. He locks eyes with himself, unable to pull away.

He is a monster, that much he knows. But he hadn't been born as such. 

His parents had raised him well, taught him the piano and manners and love. They'd poured every ounce of themselves into him and he was still an empty shell of himself, like everything that made the him from before had slowly leaked from some unseen hole.

No. If he was a monster, he'd been made that way.

And now it was time to find his creator.

=========


End file.
